


Gentle

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics)
Genre: Bucky Loves Star Wars, F/M, Let's Pretend She's in the MCU, Post-Civil War (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 04:24:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8087035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Bucky finds Kate on the West Coast after spending some time in Wakanda.





	

“I want to apologize, Kate.” Bucky said softly. 

It was simply how she was raised, by her mother of course; even if someone has screwed you over to the point of wanting to kick their ass, be the better person and don’t kick their ass. So there she stood, allowing Bucky into her apartment and letting him drink her coffee. 

“There really isn’t anything to apologize for, Buck.” Kate lied. 

They both knew it was a lie. Kate tried to be gentle like that. She tried to be gentle like her mother but… she wasn’t. She once was gentle, she did everything that was asked and expected of her. She did the ballet she hated for eight years, just to please her grandmother. She played the cello like her mother did, to please her mother but to also give herself the sense of accomplishment because she was good, she was a damn good cellist. She went to all the big galas and smiled for the rich older people to please her father. She did charity work to be like her mother, not for the publicity that eventually caught up with them, but also to help those people. None of it was quite enough for her, but she did those things to make others happy. 

How did the gentleness die? It wasn’t a hard question to answer, not to herself at least. The gentleness died in Central Park, January 21st at 10:00. She wore a big black coat, black boots, jeans, and purple shirt. She had fuzzy pink socks on. Kate remembered this like a mantra because it’s what the police officers, detectives, and everyone she ever told asked her. She had no mother to hold her and tell her it wasn’t her fault. She had a father who paid for therapy and rehab when she lost her marbles. 

She had a superhero who loved whiskey to save her life and talk to. She had Jessica. Eventually, she had Cassie and then Eli, Billy, Teddy, and Tommy. With them, she then found Steve Rogers, who never asked any questions- he just knew. He cared for her because he saw himself in her, but she’d never tell his biggest fan Eli that. After a while, Clint Barton cracked and decided to take her in. He was the most important to do so, he was her mentor and he tried his best to be her dad. In the end, after Cassie was killed, he was the father she needed and his wife Laura was the mother she lost. 

“All you did was try to help me.” Bucky frowned, trying to get her to look at him. He needed her to look at him. He needed to see some kind of acceptance of his apology in those blue eyes of hers. 

All she ever did was try to help others.   
“Steve told me about the defense you’re building for me. Said you were talking to one of your lawyer friends back in New York and they could represent me if need be.” Bucky tried again. 

It was a mess, while the real Avengers were beating the shit out of each other, the ‘Young Avengers’ were in doing the real work in the government’s hell building. They were in big trouble after harboring a fugitive and the best time to convict them of that crime was to do it when their only saviors were too busy kicking each other’s asses to help. Kate had to hand it to them, they were smart. But her team was smarter. Bucky’s- Billy’s backpack with Bucky’s things had been confiscated and locked up. With the help of the greatest jailbreaker since Houdini, Tommy managed to free the backpack. 

Inside, once the food and clothes were taken out, were all of his notebooks. In the three months he spent in Kate’s old man’s mansion, Bucky filled up seven journals of memories. He always wrote, he wrote like it was the only thing he could do. Kate had spent the past year while Bucky was in Wakanda putting all of his memories in order and making sure the story was told right. 

“It’s practically a biography romance novel.” She snorted. 

Bucky blushed, “I get it. I was a tramp.”

It was a talent of hers, making him blush like that. Not much shocked Bucky, but Kate had that way about her that just made him a little more nervous than other people did. Sam told him it was called a crush and he needed to stop pussyfooting around her before he got shot. He didn’t clarify on who was gonna shoot him but his money was on Barton’s wife Laura. 

“I didn’t add the parts about me.” She admitted.

There it was, the big problem. In the three months Bucky occupied her empty home, he had developed an infatuation with her and documented it. 

“Did you show them to Steve?” He asked timidly, like a teenage boy worried about his cooler friend’s approval. 

“He liked the part where you said ‘She is by far the stubbornest brat I have ever seen in my entire life, surpassing Steve’. Steve and Sam got a kick out of that one.” Kate smirked a little.   
Bucky raised his eyebrow, “There was more to that.” 

“I know.” Kate whispered. 

She is by far the stubbornest brat I have ever seen in my entire life, surpassing Steve. For some time I believed that my former self might have loved her but I now realize it’s this me that loves her. For more than stubbornness but for every little idiosyncrasy she has. 

“I told you I loved you at Barton’s.” Bucky looked down at his coffee mug. 

Once Steve had broken Clint, Wanda, Sam, and Scott out of the Raft, they dropped Scott off and went straight to the farm. It was T’Challa who took Bucky to the farm. By that time, Kate and Billy and Tommy along with Teddy had been at the farm for hours. Laura used her old nurse skills as well as her handiwork skills to get Bucky’s arm into a non-sparky and flammable length and then used an old oven mitt to cover it for him. She also hooked him up with the only thing strong enough in the house to sedate a super soldier. The left over epidural the midwife left behind when Laura gave birth to Nate a year before. 

Kate held Bucky down and soothed him while T’Challa helped Laura because of course the man is also a medical genius. It was after, when he was cooped up in Kate’s room- yes, she has a room there because she crashes there at least twice a month- when he admitted to loving her. It was before she read the journal; between memories, Bucky would write about the present. He wrote sappy things that if placed in stanza form, could be poetry. No one had ever written poetry for and about Kate. Figures that a 98 year old ex-assassin that would ship off to spend a year in Wakanda would be the one to do so. It was because of that, that she didn’t take much stock in his words. 

“You also told me Return of the Jedi wasn’t as good as Empire Strikes Back.” Kate pointed out. 

That made Bucky smile. It confirmed that she really wasn’t as pissed as he thought she might be. 

“Empire Strikes Back is the best one though. That’s where he realizes Darth Vader is his father, Han and Leia kiss, and everyone finds out Leia has the Force too.” Bucky backed himself up. 

He wrote a lot about Star Wars in his journals. Kate left that out of the defense too. As charming as it was to have the proclaimed deadly assassin be completely in love with Star Wars, it wouldn’t help much as most people, no matter how unstable they are, enjoy Star Wars. 

She was stubborn. She told herself she didn’t love him. She couldn’t love Eli or Tommy, tried her best with America and many others who were now like faded memories, why was it that she so effortlessly could love Bucky? It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, she just knew that loving him was like throwing herself to wolves. It meant Tony really wouldn’t like her anymore, it meant that a lot of people wouldn’t approve. It’s easy to say “who cares what people think” when you’re stupid and don’t weigh your responsibilities. 

She was 22, for the love of God. She had just turned 19 when she met him. It’s not like he set out to fall in love with her. He tried not to. It’s part of the reason he left without telling them. A lot of the reason why she was upset with him had to do with him abruptly leaving her like that. 

“So… do you like it here on the West Coast? I know Steve does.” Kate cleared her throat. 

“Don’t distract me from what we were talking about, Katherine.” He said softly, like it hurt. 

Only he called her Katherine without getting sassed. 

“Yeah, Empire was pretty good, just not as good as-” She was interrupted by Bucky who stood up and looked down at her, hands on her shoulders.

Her hand covered the smoother and newer metal hand. It was sleek and lighter than the former metal arm. She’d heard from Steve that Bucky liked it better than he liked the other one. This one didn’t have the plates, her hair wouldn’t get snagged in the arm if she were to be that close to him. 

“I love you.” His hands moved to cup her cheeks. 

It came out scared, he was terrified. The soldier didn’t love. The asset wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t that anymore. He also wasn’t cocky and charismatic Bucky Barnes anymore.   
“Maybe not like I need to move in and marry you but… I love you. I want to see you more and watch movies and eat Chinese food again. I want to lay on the roof and watch these stars because they’re easier to see than the ones in New York. I want to be your friend without you having to worry about helping me.” Bucky spoke fast. 

“So like a friend…” Kate nodded.

Bucky snorted a little and shook his head, “More or less.”

Kate laughed, moving her head in his hands to kiss his metal palm. He shivered a little, the sensors on the new arm were more advanced. 

“You plan on coming here late at night to sleep with me but also talk about how much better the movies would have been if Leia had a cool Jedi moment with a lightsaber?” Kate raised an eyebrow teasingly.

Bucky sighed and looked at her like the sun most definitely shined out of that ass, “Define sleeping together.”


End file.
